Melbourne to be Wild

Thought I would make the post titles a little more interesting. Today is officially my last day in Australia and its been a good run. Just spent the last week and a half in Melbourne and really like the city. The first 5 days I spent in the St. Kilda area which is about a 20 min train ride from downtown by the beach. St. Kilda is a cool place made up of a healthy mix of artists, bikers, backpackers and prostitutes. Another cool thing about the area is one evening walking along the beach I saw a group of people taking pictures and went over to see a bunch of penguins, which I was excited to see in the wild. Melbourne is a big sports town so I decided last week that I needed to check out a cricket match that was being played. The Melbourne Cricket Grounds stadium is located in a sort of sports arena plaza area where there is the soccer stadium, competition swimming pool and the Australian Open Tennis courts. Although it was cool to go into the MCG and walk around, I quickly realized that I am not a fan of Cricket. I can see how it could fun to a game with your friends on a sunny summer day and just hang out and drink beers, but the game is too long for me. Its like the more boring version of baseball which I didn't think was a phrase possible, but regardless I gave it a shot and it was worth seeing. After a few days I left the St.kilda area because it was so far from the city and, despite the positive of cool people, the hostel I was staying at was filthy and i woke up and realized I had my first run in with bedbugs. Moving to the downtown area it was nice being within walking distance of everything. I spent a couple of days checking out free museums, markets and other things. I was still waiting for my card to be sent so I could really move anywhere, so I got a little bored for a few days. Melbourne is a great place for working while travelling, but like any city you can only wander around looking at things for so long. Finally yesterday my card came in the mail and I bought a ticket to Bali, Indonesia (and a $12 flight from Jakarta to Singapore fro visa reasons). I am just starting to realize how different tomorrow is going to be from yesterday and am super excited. I love Australia, but it is very similar to the United States and I am looking forward to a new culture, some adventure and a far more favorable exchange rate. I'm going to savor the last few hours of semi-cool weather for a few months and then head to the Airport. On the other side.

Some final notes on Australia:

• There are loads of Germans here because I guess this is the place that everybody travels to take a year off. Often times I would find myself in a dorm room with all or mostly Germans. The Australian government just stopped giving out working holiday Visas a few weeks ago.
  
• The backpacker meal is pasta or stir fry and I am so sick of both (again excited for Asia)
• I didn't see a Kangaroo, but I saw a Wallaby, Monitor lizard, Hand-sized spiders, Bearded Dragons, Snakes, All types of Lizards, Bats with 3 foot wingspans, Turtles, and tons of crazy colored birds and Cockatoos
• I am not a fan of the Australian coin money with the 50 cent piece being way too big and bulky and the most expensive 2 dollar coin being the smallest and very easy to lose
• Melbourne was founded by a guy with the last name Batman and in its early days the city was called Batmania (and its pronounced how you hope it would be)
• You would have to be rich to be a alcoholic here
• After a month and a half I am still having close calls getting hit by cars from looking the wrong way before crossing the street
• Kangaroo is really good to eat if done right. I had it as a steak, sausages and burgers. Its super lean and better for the environment
• I think I have met a traveller from every single country in Europe and people from every part of the world and have learned so much just talking to them about their lives and travels
  
• I think there is a man in Australia who is the most intersting man in the world's twice as intersting older brother: XXXX Beer
  
• Favorite Australian phrase: "No worries" , pretty much sums up their layed back, friendly lifestyle
  

Brisbane/Byron Bay, Australia

So I finally have found time to write another blog post and looking at where my last one finished I realize i probably need to do them more often to keep them shorter. Well, my time in Brisbane was fairly short lived. The "labor job" I landed turned out to be scrubbing ash off a fire damaged warehouse about an hour outside the city. The whole time the job was implied to be cash in hand, but at the end of the first day the boss gave me papers which I did not have the proper visa for so that fell through. Probably my biggest regret of the trip so far has been not spending $500 a working holiday visa as I have seen lots of work opportunities to stay a few weeks in one place, but was unable to act upon it. Anyways, the ash scrubbing job wasn't the greatest anyway. Brisbane was a pretty average city in my opinion. It had a nice river running along the downtown area, cool live music scene in the Valley, a lot of modern buildings and a nice free museum. I enjoyed my time there, but after about four days I decided it was time to take the bus down to Byron Bay. Unfortunately, my first days in Byron Bay were very stressful. When I got there, I was thrilled to find out that somehow one of the transactions I made had a virus that tried to hack into my bank account and Bank of America decided to cancel all my cards, leaving me with $60 dollars cash to figure it out. Thankfully after two days of phone calls my Parents were able to wire me $100 in which I was able to use my last $3 to log onto the Internet to get the Western Union code(Thanks Mom and Dad). Finally two days later BOA was able to wire me more money to my Australian Bank account and I am now waiting for my card to be delivered to me here in Melbourne. After all that stress I was finally able to settle in and enjoy Byron Bay. Byron is a quiet little surf town that has an awesome beach and had done a good job at fighting off developers licking at their chops to build resorts there. I stayed at a hostel that had free surfboards to use and although the surf was pretty flat, got a good three days out in the water. It was a pleasant change to the freezing waters I am accustomed to in Westport, WA. Byron also had a really good group of travellers that were staying there and was a really fun place to sit out on picnic tables drinking goon (cheap boxed wine) or making bonfires out on the beach with somebody playing sing along songs on the guitar; also while drinking goon. While in the area I had to make the 1.5 hour bus ride to Nimbin. Nimbin was the site of a hippy Aquarius festival in the early 70's out in the middle of the the countryside. So many people liked it so much that they just decided to stay and thus Nimbin was born. Now it is not as authentic as I imagined as the main street (i.e. the whole town) is mostly catered towards tourism, but it was defiantely and interesting day trip. Leaving Byron, which I admit was really hard to do, I took the bus back to Brisbane and made the flight to Melbourne to wait for my card and to enjoy my last stop in Australia before heading to SE Asia. Melbourne I can already tell is my kind of city. Even the airport was way more comfortable to sleep in. I'm not going to elaborate too much because this is only my second day here, but I really like the sports focus and faster pace of the city. Will post about it soon and give my final thoughts on my time in Australia as I have realized I have left a lot out. Also, I'll try to get some pictures up soon.

Airlie Beach / Brisbane, Australia

So after 11 days I finally made it out of Cairns. I was having trouble finding rides that followed through and thought that taking the bus lacked the adventure I came on this trip to find, but finally got a ride down to Airlie Beach. Responding to a post on a hostel message board for people needed to share fuel costs, I eventually got a ride from who I thought was going to be a backpacker but turned out to be a woman in her mid 50's with an affinity for professional poker tournaments who had lived in Cairns for the last 25 years and just this past year decided to move to Sydney. So Liz, another french backpacker named Antoine and make the 10 hour drive south to Airlie Beach, that ended up taking two days. Liz was great to us, cooking us really good meals in her RV trailer all the way down, but was a very slow driver and did not like to drive for long periods at a time. So me and Antoine had a nice first night sleeping in the back of her car being eaten alive by bugs. It was also a nice change of pace though as she took us on tours of all the towns as we went through on the way like the Military city of Townsville. Finally after two full days we made it to Airlie Beach and I split ways with Antoine as he was leaving on a boat to the Whitsunday Islands the next day. Looking back I didn't do a whole lot in Airlie. Its a really pretty place, with a nice beach and tons of sailboats both personal and for taking tourists to the Whitsunday islands. During the time I was there was "footy weekend" where tons of Australian football armature club teams go somewhere together, wear their jerseys, drink and watch the championship game of pro Australian football. I don't really get it, but I guess they like to match and it was fun to party with them and see the "Yankees" of footy beat the smaller team (it was actually the second footy weekend, the weekend before the game ended in a draw so they played a whole new game a week later. Again, not a lot of reasoning to it). Speaking of sports, I had an interesting husky football experience where the only way I could follow the game is to call my parents long distance and have them put the phone by a radio. All the people in the Internet cafe must have thought I was nuts with a phone to my ear, not saying anything, just periodically jumping up and fist pumping; but it was worth it in the end when we kicked the winning FG. Another thing I am starting to notice is that the backpacker trail is pretty well established, because I am starting to see the same faces around hostels. I think this is good because it makes travelling easy and fun, but sometimes you wonder if you are just going with the flow. I am meeting some very interesting people though, and just talking to people learning a lot. After some time of failing to find a job on one of the sailboats and laying on the beach, I found a really cheap flight to the city of Brisbane. The two hour airport shuttle bus was a 45 min late, and despite this and the pleas of a few of us on the bus, the driver decided to take his "state mandated" 15 min break right in the middle of the 1.5 hour bus ride that is an "airport shuttle" intended to get peopel to the airport to make their flights. So, we got to the airport with 15 minutes until takeoff and about 5 of us sprinted as fast as we could through the airport, only to find out the flight was delayed (I guess everything in Australia is late, but at least things worked out.) After the flight it was too late to get to the city and find accommodation, so me, an Italian ski instructor named Victoria and a German trying to escape the rain of Melbourne named Max, spent an extremely uncomfortable night on the floor of the Brisbane airport. Today I mader it to the city, found a hostel and landed a "labor" job paying pretty good money that kinda just fell into my lap, so tomorrow I start that job that is supposed to last two weeks and will almost pay for all my time in Australia. May not be a lot to write about while I settle in for a couple weeks, but hopefully I will get to really know Brisbane for better or worse.